The Dum Dum Girls is the creation of 27-year-old singer-songwriter Kristin Gundred of Los Angeles, who goes by the name Dee Dee in the group. She began recording demos at home and put out a couple of singles on indie labels as the Dum Dum Girls, which attracted the attention of the Sub Pop label and legendary producer Richard Gottehrer (Blondie, the Go-Go’s, Raveonettes). Gundred was taken with Gottehrer’s pioneering 1960s productions, which included “I Want Candy” by his studio group the Strangeloves as well as the girl-group classic “My Boyfriend’s Back” by the Angels, and convinced him to produce her debut. Gottehrer has put just enough polish on these echo-laden tracks to bring out their hooks without tampering with the Dum Dum Girls’ primordial garage-pop vision. Tracks such as “Everybody’s Out” and “It Only Takes One Night” sound like a tougher, less-produced version of the Raveonettes or maybe the Vivian Girls, whose ex-drummer Frankie Rose is now a Dum Dum Girl. However, the cover version of Sonny & Cher’s “Baby Don’t Go” aspires to be more than just cavernous noise-pop. It somehow stays true to the wistful tone of the original while also completely turning the song on its ear. Gundred slows the pace, delivering an emotional, yearning vocal punctuated only by occasional stabs of reverbed guitar. It’s magnificent. The 11 songs on “I Will Be” don’t crack the 30-minute mark in total, but that’s plenty of time to be captivated and occasionally bowled over by the Dum Dum Girls.

Sam Gnerre has worked for the Daily Breeze in Torrance since 1984. He grew up in Fontana, Calif., and is a graduate of Fontana High School. He earned a B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master's degree in library science from UCLA. He was hired at the Daily Breeze in 1984 to help with the conversion of the paper's manual clip file system to an online database of archived stories. Currently, he writes the paper's weekly News Quiz, does a weekly music CD review, and researches and writes local history articles for the South Bay History blog, in addition to his current duties as a night website editor for the Southern California News Group.